Birvidik

Few non-sailors appreciate just how slow a mode of transport sailing usually is. Unless you are an Ellen McArthur or a Pete Goss, with millions of pounds' worth of multihull straining at the leash beneath your feet, you will be lucky to do much more than about seven knots. Your average speed is more likely to be around three to four knots. Or two to three knots if you're as much of a wimp regarding weather forecasts as we are: "Go out in a predicted force five? - Good God man, are you completely mad?"

Let's put that into perspective. Seven knots is around eight miles per hour and three to four knots is just over three miles per hour. So if you are hurtling along parallel to the shore at seven knots you could be overtaken by someone having a leisurely bicycle ride along the promenade. Most of the time, at three to four knots, you would be keeping pace with someone taking a gentle stroll. You can, however, take some comfort in the fact that you're steaming past the jellyfish.

In fact you get used to it after a while and crawling along at plod factor one seems normal. Your perception of distance accommodates. Thirty nautical miles seems a reasonable day's travelling taking, as it will, around six hours. Fifty miles is a ten to eleven hour trek and if you try much above 80 miles then you're in for an overnighter. What were small distances loom large in the yottie's psyche. Somewhere a couple of hundred miles away is ball-achingly distant.

This is challenged when you switch to road travel, even at our gastropodic pace. We rarely drive faster than 60 miles an hour, change drivers every couple of hours and don't drive in the dark if we can help it. Even under these circumstances we cover around 500 miles in a day. An Aussie would drive that far for a visit to the pub. My brother in law, Geoff, would think nothing of doing it before breakfast. To a Yottie it's the equivalent of accidentally engaging warp drive and suddenly finding yourself in Ursa Minor. We drove a circuitous route to St. Malo in six days. Coming the other way by boat took us nearly three years.

We drove to St. Malo because, as previously mentioned, we needed to get back to Jersey to sort out some paperwork. We planned to bring the campervan and cat over on Condor Ferries, so before we left Lefkas we took the cat to the vet, had her injected, de-wormed, de-flea-ed (1) and certificated to within an inch of her life and then set about organising getting the van and cat from St. Malo to Jersey.

In this, though, we were once again thwarted by bureaucracy.

What we had failed to take into account was that, lack of MOT notwithstanding, Jersey is one of the most highly regulated societies on the planet. For a start, they don't like campervans. Nasty things. Too big, too crass, too NQOC. On top of that, people in campervans might just manage to avoid having their bank accounts emptied quite as efficiently as is the Jersey norm. So they are discouraged.

You can visit Jersey with a campervan or caravan.
If you get a permit.
In advance.
At a price.

Then when you trundle off the ferry you can't just drive it around. Oh no - can't have that at all. You must drive it straight to an approved campsite and stay there. Do not pass go, do not collect £200. Then, when you've spent your life savings on The Island, you can drive it back to the ferry and bugger off back where you came from and good bloody riddance.

There are however, only two approved campsites on the island and they were both shut. So that ruled out taking the van.

We re-assessed.

Frantic emails and telephone calls located a site about 10 miles outside St. Malo where we could leave the campervan. We then planned to travel on Condor as foot passengers, carrying the cat in its carry-box. I contacted Condor to book the seats. Here we hit the next snag: Cats can only be carried in a vehicle, not by foot passengers.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Company Policy, Sir".

"That's a statement, not a reason"

"That's as maybe, Sir, but it's all you're getting."

"But I can't take my vehicle over to Jersey, the authorities won't let it in."

"Wouldn't make any difference if they did, Sir."

"Why's that?" I sighed.

"We don't carry campervans on the St. Malo - Jersey route, anyway".

"But I've seen campervans in Jersey owned by residents. So how do people get them from France to Jersey?"

"Get the ferry from St. Malo to Portsmouth and then get the ferry from there to Jersey. That does carry campervans."

"Or, I suppose I could drive to Calais, go through the Channel Tunnel, drive to Portsmouth and then get the ferry to Jersey."

"That is a possibility, Sir, but it's a fairly circuitous route to travel fifty miles."

We re-assessed.

Further frantic emails and telephone calls located a cattery about 30 miles the other side of St. Malo from where we intended to leave the van. We booked Einstein in and set off from Lefkas.

Now all we had to do was drive from Greece to Brittany, drop off the cat, drive to the depot, drop of the van, get to St. Malo ferry terminal, sail to Jersey and then carry out the whole process in reverse.

Piece of Piss.


(1) This must be one of the few words in English that actually needs two hyphens to make it intelligible.